Cloudsplitter

Rating:
Summary: Long and entertaining journey
Review: This is an impressive book in scope and execution. It's told through the tortured memories of John Brown's third son, Owen, who survived the doomed attack on Harper's Ferry.

The book pays little attention to the Harper's Ferry adventure and to the Browns' adventures in Kansas, and concentrates instead of the social and familial context of Brown's actions. There is considerably more attention paid to Owen's relationship with his father and his obsessions about sex and human relationships than to the cowboy style adventures in Kansas.

While it is written in a stately and measured tone, it does not have the feel of something written in the late 18th century, and Banks' narrator seems comfortable using words and constructions which sound quite modern. Perhhaps because of this, the book never drags in spite of its enormous length.

The central question the book seems to me to ask his the eternal one about ends justifying means. The Browns' seemed to know that the actions that they took in Kansas were morally wrong--yet they believed, and Owen believes at the time of the writing, that had John Brown and his gang not perpetrated the Pottawatomie massacre that the entire course of American history would be different. They believed that the moderate free-soil politicians would have sold out, that Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave state, and that Lincoln would never have been elected and the NORTH would have seceded. Of course we'll never know, but we have to ask ourselves if their actions were justified given what they believed. Definitely shows you the terrorists point of view.

Very good book on a fascinating subject.

Rating:
Summary: Can you handle it?
Review: I carried this book back and forth to Europe......no small dedication at 800 pages.....it weighs a few pounds!.....but I figured that 24 hrs on Alitalia would give me a fighting chance......

I read a book or two a week, week in, week out. This one stopped me in my tracks. It is densely written, complex, but seemingly infinitely rewarding. It took 6 weeks to do a fast-scan read, but it has paid back as much time as I have been willing to devote to it with level after level of meaning and detail. Even a casual read has changed my entire notion of race, politics, religion, individuality, family, and the nature of the daily struggle for the legal tender. Can't wait for a DETAILED reading.......

I would rank it among the top five or six American novels.....ever: Moby Dick, Sometimes A Great Notion, Gravity's Rainbow.......Infinite Jest?

Banks is a college professor of English......I can easily see a college course built around this book......even a college major. It failed to win the National Book Award a couple of years back.....which tells me more about the judges than this book. That the judges probably thought it too large, too complex, too obscure and too unapproachable has cost it many readers, and caused it to drop from notice........... A real tragedy for our assembled consciousness.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding. The best that historical fiction can be.
Review: This book paints as no other book does the mood and feel of the pre-Civil War north. What did it mean to be an abolitionist? What kind of (white) people were willing to fight for that cause?

The portrayals of the American landscape are thrilling, too. The way Banks describes the sun hitting the Adirondacks seems to come straight out of a Hudson River School painting. Those descriptions alone are a reason to buy this book. But the real draw is the austere, inexorable march -- well paced over the 1,000 pages -- to the novel's violent end.

Rating:
Summary: John Brown: terrorist or visionary?
Review: On his recent book-tour visit to Boulder, writer Barry Lopez said that he was reading this novel, which raises some fascinating questions about terrorism and patriotism.

"When we gazed onto the world," abolitionist John Brown's last surviving son, Owen, tells us, "we stood as if on a peak bathed in the bright light of freedom, which enabled us to see the true nature of man, and therefore, simply by following our own true nature, we were able to follow the Lord God Almighty. And after much scrupulous examination, having confidently discerned the Lord's will, we naturally had determined to make all men and women free. If, to accomplish that great task, we must put to death those who would oppose us, then so be it: it is the will of the Lord: and in this time and place, He hath no greater work to set before His children than that they stamp upon the neck of Satan and crack the jaw of his followers and liberate all the white and black children of the Lord from the obscene stink and corruption of slavery. Simply, if we would defeat Satan, we must defeat his most heinous invention, which was American Negro slavery" (p. 567).

In his 758-page narrative, Owen Brown triumphs in revealing the "Secret History" (p. 678) of his father's intriguing life. Through his son's eyes, we learn that John Brown was not only an "abolitionist firebrand," who changed the course of American history by slaughtering proponents of slavery in Kansas and by raiding the federal armory at Harper's Ferry in 1859, but also "a good Christian husband and father, a private man whose most satisfying and important acts were manifested in the visible comfort of his family" (p. 144). "He was a man who had pledged his life to bring about the permanent and complete liberation of the Negroe slaves" (pp. 144-45), Owen tells us. "The Lord speaks to me," his father explained. "He shows me things" (p. 678).

Equally profound, chilling, and entertaining, Banks' historical novel follows "John Brown's little army of the Lord" (p. 570) from "helping Negroes escape from slavery to killing those who would enslave them" (p. 414), against a pre-Civil War portrait charged with the spirit of the times. "It was like a dream, a beautiful, soothing dream of late autumn," Owen recalls, "low, gray skies, smell of woodsmoke, fallen leaves crackling beneath my feet, and somewhere out there, in the farmsteads and plantations ahead of me, swift retribution! Freedom! The bloody work of the Lord!" (p. 451). Banks presents us with a mercurial John Brown, who will leave you long wondering: terrorist or patriot? madman or visionary?

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: What a great way to spend my vacation.
Review: I purchased this book two years ago and never got around to reading it until last week when I needed a book to take on vacation. Why did I wait so long? This book is incredible. From the moment I opened the front cover till its finish I found it difficult to put down. I haven't been so consumed by a book since "Angle of Repose" (Stegner). I would highly recommend this work to anyone even slightly interested in this period of our country (pre-civil war). At 758 pages, it's not a two day book, but I found myself staying out of the pool just so I could continue reading. (Thank goodness my children are old enough and good enough swimmers I didn't have to watch them like a hawk.) Besides the prose being beautiful, I found it a wonderful way to learn more about the nuances of living in this period. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: historically facinating and personally compelling
Review: This book is great on two levels:

1. The historical perpective on that time period told in such personal terms. Owen Browns voice is so real to me- brilliant character development and command of language.

2. The saga of a family which finds itself at a crucial moment in history.

These both combine to make a great read.

Rating:
Summary: This Is Truth. Truth?
Review: A proposed experiment: Read this book. If you like fascinating character, sweeping plot, and have a middling level of patience, you'll love it. Promise. Now, when you're done, read a 'biography' of John Brown. This search engine could provide you with several options. Now, compare the two.

This book, in my opinion, puts to question the entire field of biography, historical writing, and questions of truth. Through the eyes of one of Brown's sons, Banks reconstructs the world of abolition and frontiersmen with more delicacy, verve and passion that a handful of professional historians could compile. By making the narrative of the story the mind of one of it's primary actors, Banks accesses authenticity with an ingenuity unseen in standard biography. Because he is a writer of fiction, Banks is more likely to manage the psychological, sociological, and cultural complexities of a given moment than academics, simply because he knows that lives are not made up of moments at Harper's Ferry; rather, lives are comprised by the internal contemplations and arguments we have with the world. The resultant actions are always caricatures of such imaginations. Kudos to Banks for doing the research, and refusing to allow it to force his hand into the drawing of cartoons.

Rating:
Summary: A long look at John Brown
Review: I agree with the previous reviewer's comment that the length of this book will likley go unnoticed by the reader. It takes a fine writer and a finer storyteller to capture the depth and complexity of these characters, their relationships and their story without numbing the reader with inconsequential text. Banks does all of this grandly. Brown's dualistic nature is fascinating: extraordinary competence and drive repeatedly de-railed by grossly poor judgement. The author's treatment of these larger themes are a rewarding part of this book. Banks also gives marvelous descriptions of day-to-day life, people and the natural world that make the 700+ pages read like 200.

Rating:
Summary: Suffers by comparison
Review: It ultimately is a perilous business to compare one novel to another. Every author is possessed of his or her own unique and idiosyncratic voice and vision. Even when two authors are treating similar subject matter, there is no literary law which states that their work cannot share the same stage. That said, it is unthinkable--given the commercial and critical reception accorded "Cloudsplitter"--not to mention a second, unjustly neglected novel about John Brown that takes an entirely different approach, and does so far more successfully. Mr. Banks's conventionally written book is serious, ambitious, orthodox, and epic. It is a commendable effort. But Bruce Olds's "Raising Holy Hell," while less than half as long, not only succeeds in bringing John Brown more provocatively and electrically to life, it employs a literary technique that is more aesthetically suited to its subject. Mr. Banks apparently set out to "solve" John Brown. Brown was and rightly remains a moral enigma, a living contradiction, one capable of great monstrousness and great mercy, equal parts cruelty and kindness, and Mr. Banks wishes to frame an "answer" to the question of how this could be so. Finally, "Cloudsplitter" is a sort of explanation, an explication. It purports to give us THE story, and in fact, it does give us one, however turgid and ponderous at times. But the real problem with the book is that it presumes--this is a matter of authorial sensibility and tone--that it is the ONLY story. It is not. Historical accuracy aside, the story of John Brown is one that does not yield answers. It inspires questions, questions that are of the greatest political and moral import. What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? When does a just hatred of hatred evolve into something more evil than the original? At what point does psychological imbalance slide into sheer madness? What is the difference between an honorable single-mindedness and fanatical monomania? In "Raising Holy Hell," each of these questions is brilliantly posed, but the author encourages the reader to provide his or her own answers. In doing so, he flatters his audience. In "Cloudsplitter," the reader is spoonfed the author's answers. Personally, I could care less about Mr. Banks's (politically correct) answers. They are not MY answers, nor, I have to believe, are they most readers. If you wish to grapple with the true complexity at the heart of John Brown's character, if you wish to understand his demons, read "Raising Holy Hell." Or better yet, read both books. Contrast and compare. Judge for yourself. "Cloudsplitter," in this reader's opinion, is weak broth by comparison.

Rating:
Summary: Audacious, Ambitious tome for patient reader.
Review: This book was so ambitious and audacious, ambitious on trying to rewrite the history of John Brown, audacious on trying to have the story recounted by the 3rd son, Owen Brown, of John Brown. Since we knew that Owen was a real person in history indeed, this book did offend Owen in a sense, by making Owen paradoxical, both cruel and sympathic, bold and coward.

The design of letting this book related by Owen, in my opinion, is both the best and the worst design. Best in the vivid descriptions of Brown family's life that when you really being drawed into it, you felt you WERE living with them at the same time, in the same place, breathing the same air, sharing the same event and mood. And worst, since we ALWAYS knew it was in fact not true, Owen's personality was not true, the result was that I could not help but being conscious how Banks made his Owen to be reasonable and natural in every scene and how to make Owen's sound plausible.

Banks himself stated in the preface that this book was a mere fiction. But even on the historical level this book had many errors, time rearranged, scene apparently contrived, etc. But let's forget all these, be regardless the doubt between the real history and the contrived Owen. Then this book was indeed a very good book.

The main theme was J.B, surely, his obsession, his paranoid about setting the black people free. But the struggle of the mind of Owen, namely the relation of father-son was another main topic Russel want to write. Since Russel treated both these 2 issues in much detail, this book became a huge tome. And both themes were quite convincible and successful. In my opinion the Father-son struggle was the most valuable part of this long epic. How a son lived under the shadow of the FatherGiant. (The meaning of the title "Cloudsplitter" did not reveal after some 400 pages, it is a name of the mountain, and in Indian it mean "The Giant". At the same time it mean "to split the cloud. So it is a triple pun. A good title indeed)

For any non-american reader like me, John Brown was but a unfamiliar name. I in fact knew nothing about John Brown and nothing about his historic position and his famous Haper ferry raid before reading this book. So in the beginning I faced some difficulties on following the story--The author had assumed that the readers already knew it. And as if Russel want to confirm this, then the life-sketch of Brown's was laid out suddently in the very early pages. This WAS a writing style, but I was afraid that for some readers (me included), the whole story became instantly boring. All I had to do thereafter was to verify page by page the ending I already knew. But It's my personal reading habit, this book was ok indeed.

This was my first book of Banks, so I highly wondered that, was the language in this book the constant style of Banks? I found that the long, scattered, full-of-common sentences in the WHOLE book seemed to mimic John Brown's speaking tone -- It WAS still a writing style, but sometimes I just felt the page-after-page constant long sentences were annoying. And it was another reason why this book is so big.

Another, Banks tried very hard to explain the state of mind of Owen. And since we ALL know it is not real, Banks faced some difficulties too. For example, the Haper Ferry raid. In order to make Owen coldly observed their gangs being killed below, Banks must at first make Owen to be a cold-blood guy. So we had the The Epps story, the maid on the ship story, the fight in Boston story, etc. of Owen, to reinforce that. That did rationalized the cruelity of Owen. But this was still another reason to make the book so huge.

My only one complaint: why Owen could survive after the falling from the treetop? Even if he was uninjured and could mount on a wagon, the roads to their farm must had been blocked by so many troups. This part was too dramatic. This book is a good and long journey for any amitious reader. Highly recommended.